How we calculate our food waste figure (Republic of Ireland)

Scope and definitions

The methodology outlined below is used to calculate the total tonnes of food wasted in our Irish operations for the full Tesco financial year 2018/19. The information provided is in conformance with the Food Loss and Waste Accounting Standard (FLW Standard).

Timeframe

The published figure represents the food wasted in our full financial year 2018/2019. This year, this includes 52 weeks, from 25th February 2018 to 23rd February 2019 inclusive.

Store Location and Type

The scope of this calculation covers food waste arising only from our depots and stores in Ireland. Food waste arising in customer restaurants and staff canteens in our stores and depots are out of scope, as is any food waste arising in operations owned by Tesco, upstream in the supply chain, such as haulage wastage and committed crop wastage.

The calculation only covers our operations. Therefore, waste arising at our suppliers’ sites and from third party counters in Tesco stores is not included.

Some individual products were excluded in other categories where they were clearly not food, for example: books, glassware.

Data Sources

In order to calculate the amount of food wasted each year we record the following data in our stores and depots.

Retail waste: This dataset contains the number of retail units wasted and the total value (£) of such waste per item, split by waste type –

DAM waste: products that are damaged in store, whether on the shop floor or in storage. This also includes waste arising from customer returns and from clearance events.

OOC waste: Products that exceed the ‘Best before’ or ‘Use by’ date and can no longer be sold

Product Write Off waste: Products that are not suitable for sale. For example, the supplier has sent a request to withdraw the product as it is not safe for consumption.

Returns: customer returns that can no longer be sold.

Exceptional Events waste: Products that are damaged during an exceptional event. For example, this waste could be caused by a fridge breakdown or flood.

Depot waste: This dataset contains the number of depot units wasted and the total value (£) of such waste per item. Depot waste figures are reported as a mixture of positive and negative totals. Negative figures are ‘losses’, i.e. waste. Positive figures are single items that have been retrieved from wasted packs (e.g. individual cartons retrieved from a broken case). The total waste per item is the sum of losses and gains multiplied by minus one, to align these data with other datasets.

Product data: This dataset contains the contents weight and the packaged weight per item. Note that where duplicates are found, a conservative estimate is taken and the highest weight is used.

Bakery Weights data: This dataset contains the weight per item for bakery products that do not have a weight assigned in the product weight data. The product specification weight is provided by our bakery team.

Self-scan data: This dataset contains the packaged weight of items as measured in store self-scan tills. These data are used where product data from the source above are not available. Note that where duplicates are found, a conservative estimate is taken and the highest weight is used. Given these data include packaging, these are only used for items where a more suitable weight is not available and where the weight of packaging is not considered to be significant.

Store Donations data: This dataset contains the tonnage of food donations from stores. Donation figures are provided by our charity partner FoodCloud. These are estimated based on the number of crates collected from stores over the financial year and combined with a weight of 6.5kg per crate.

Depot donations data: This dataset contains the tonnage of food donations from our depots. We also facilitate donation from depot of oversupply and reject food owned by suppliers. These are included in the donations figure and in the total surplus figures. No donations are made to animal feed in our Irish operations due to local regulation. Donations data is provided by our charity partner FoodCloud.

Methodology

The bullet points below explain how we have calculated our total food waste tonnage for the full year 2018/19:

Included in the scope of our calculation is any food that has not been sold in our stores because it is past its best before or use by date, has been damaged, withdrawn from the market or de-ranged. The non-food categories mentioned above are removed at this stage.

The number of units wasted per item is converted into a weight measured in tonnes by multiplying the number of units wasted by the per unit weight*.

Waste tonnages are summed to obtain totals by category and for our entire Irish operations.

We used this calculation method for 82% of the waste products (by weight) from our own operations – in our depots and within our stores.

The remaining 18% of waste by weight (equivalent to 27% of total units wasted) occurs in products for which a weight is not available (this could include items such as baguettes in our bakery or food in our deli counters) or where the weight provided is not correct.

The following steps are taken to select the best estimate for product contents weights:

Product content weights are checked category by category and are marked as requiring adjustment where the content weight is missing or if it is high or low compared to the category average.

If an adjustment is required, packaged weights are selected where available and if appropriate per expert judgement.

For all items with no packaged weight data available, items are checked on a sub-category basis and either the category or sub-category average is used based on expert judgement.

For the Bakery category, primary data collection was necessary to obtain average weights for several sub-groups.

To minimise the risk associated with such estimates, categories with the largest number of waste items are prioritised and checked in more detail as these have the greatest impact on the total waste.

In addition, within each category, the products with the highest number of wasted units are checked manually one-by-one as these can also have a significant impact on the total waste tonnage.

Where charity donations are included in our waste records we subtract the donated tonnage from our food waste figure as these items are donated for human consumption.

* It is assumed that 1 L is equivalent to 1 Kg where product content weights are listed as volumes.

Food waste intensity figures

1.1% of food was wasted in our Irish operations. This figure represents our food waste per food sales by weight. The sales weight is measured using the same method for food waste: the number of units sold is multiplied by the same per unit weight used in the calculation described above.

Reporting against our target

We have made a commitment that no food that is safe for human consumption will go to waste from Tesco Ireland stores by the end of 2020. This is defined as out of code food waste except for food that cannot be donated by law or because of food safety issues.

Restatement of food waste figures

We have recalculated our total food waste tonnage for financial year 2017/18 as it was found that waste data for products sold only in Ireland were missing from the retail waste data scanned in stores. This has resulted in a 1.3% increase in the total food waste figure.

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